


Myths and Legends

by Kerriathechosen1



Category: Penumbra (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Character Death, Explicit Language, Family Fluff, Frictional Games Challenge, Myths & Legends, One Shot, Some Humor, Swearing, Tragedy, you'll understand once you read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 07:41:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24347416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerriathechosen1/pseuds/Kerriathechosen1
Summary: This is a part of the Frictional Games Challenge of 2020. This work is prompt #1, "Myths & legends."Now, no one would ever know what happened down here. No one would ever know the existence of the Tuurngait.It would simply be a legend lost in time.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Myths and Legends

“Tori,” hissed a voice. A girl with long, reddish-brown hair had been peeking through the peephole on the closed door; she looked over her shoulder at her sister, who was sitting on top of her father’s mahogany desk with one leg crossed over the other, examining an open file in her hands. The girls could have been no older than thirteen, but they had the physique and sharp look in their eyes of trained spies.

Their father’s study was a secure location -- multiple locks shackled the door, and there weren’t any windows or other entrances to the room. Ever since the girls were old enough to walk, they had been fascinated by the utter secrecy of the room. By the age of nine, they started learning how to crack the codes. Whenever their father was away on a “business trip”, this was where they’d hide out, reading through whatever thick files they could find. They quickly discovered their father was a part of some top-secret government research.

“You find something?”

The other girl rolled her eyes. “No, I’m calling you over here for nothing. Tori, get your ass over here.” Victoria matched her sister’s eye movements and carefully stepped across the room, each step slow and silent. Their mother was still home, after all, and if she knew where they’d been, the punishment would be severe.

“Okay. What is it?”

“You ever heard of the Tuurngait?” Her eyes were glittering with interest as she spoke.

Tori shrugged. “Not really. Tell me.”

“The Tuurngait are a species of  _ legend  _ worshipped by the Inuit people.” The girl spoke in an exaggerated tone, as if she were reading a story to a bunch of preschoolers. “They’re a sentient extraterrestrial hive mind with the ability to infect people like a virus and take control of their minds, leaving their bodies into empty husks of what they once were.”

“That’s just some stupid myth a bored teenager came up with.”

The girl on the desk shrugged. “Apparently, dad’s researching it.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“This was his ‘top secret’ file, Vic. It’s the only one hidden inside the secret compartment of his desk instead of the  _ obvious  _ safe. It’s the only one locked with his social security number. And it’s the only one written in invisible ink. … Unless you think this is a  _ prank _ , and dad  _ expected  _ us to find it.”

“... Nicole… You can’t possibly believe --”

“Come on, Tori, stop taking everything so seriously. Of  _ course  _ it’s not real.” Nicole closed the file and hopped off the desk, carefully sliding it back inside the secret compartment, exactly how she had found it. “Dad just hid it ‘cause he’s embarrassed of anyone finding out he’s involved in combining science with mythology.” She stood up and gave her sister a knowing look. “You know how proud he is.”

Victoria frowned. “That…  _ IS  _ true…”

Nicole sighed. “Come on.” She took her sister’s hand and ran over to the shelf with the Walkie-Talkies. “Here, we’ll play a game of spy, okay? Just… don’t jump to stupid conclusions. I know you do that. Just don’t.”

Victoria nodded, squeezing her sister’s hand and forcing a grin. “Okay, I won’t.”

* * *

“Monkey…”

“What?”

Silence followed his question. A creeping tension curled around his lungs like weeds, choking him from the inside out. Philip’s breathing became stunted and labored as he pulled himself into the shadow of a box, curling up into a ball and trying to remain still. He didn’t think he’d made it in time, but there wasn’t any other option. He would collapse from exhaustion any second now. He just hoped the darkness would save him this time, as it had countless times before.

“That ain’t gonna cut it,” the voice mumbled.

“Then what will, Clarence?” Philip snapped.

A dim light beamed on the floor of the nearby intersection of hallways. Philip pulled himself further into the wall, thinking,  _ ‘No, no, don’t turn here, don’t point that at me, I can’t breathe, please, no more,’ _ and all the while, Clarence was panicking and whimpering for him to keep still and quiet. The light shone brighter and brighter as the Infected stumbled into sight. Its flashlight fell upon Philip’s position by utter chance. The monster scowled and shot towards him. Philip bounced back up to his feet and started sprinting desperately down the hallway.

* * *

Nicole’s thumb slid down the side of the Walky-Talky until it hit the button. She squeezed it, and murmured, “V-8, do you copy?”

“Copy, N-7.”

Nicole stifled a giggle as she peeked out from behind the staircase. Their mother was dusting off the living room fan, causing dust particles to fall onto their sleepy mutt’s face and make it sneeze. “Target is incapacitated. Bait at the ready. Over.”

“All clear, over.”

Nicole tapped the polished wood of the railing and waited for her dog’s ears to perk up. From the kitchen, Victoria gently rattled a bell, just outside of her mother’s hearing range. The dog sat straight up and started toward the kitchen.

“V-8, target is headed your way. Stay out of sight, over.”

With that, Nicole raced up the stairs with silent footsteps, pretending that she didn’t hear her sister’s uncontrolled laughter as the dog sniffed its way right to her sister’s hiding place and assaulted her with a lick-fest to the face.

* * *

“The dogs, monkey, the dogs are in the walls,” Clarence whined. Philip kicked the nearest box he saw against the unnatural hole on his left and hoped to god there wasn’t a dog in the one on the other side of the hall. He should have known he wouldn’t be so lucky. He heard manic barking almost as soon as his feet passed by the hole; he didn’t need to hear the gravelly voice cursing in his head to get him going.

He threw himself into a nearby room and pushed the desk against the door. Then he jumped on top, opened up the ventilation shaft in the ceiling, and climbed in. It was all second nature for him now. A long time ago, as a teen perhaps, he would have thought it  _ cool  _ to be in this position; he would have enjoyed pretending he was a spy. But he didn’t feel that way any longer -- he only felt like a pathetic, cornered animal, which he rightfully was.

“Where are the Tuurngait, Clarence?” Philip demanded as he crawled through the small vent. He thanked the gods he didn’t have claustrophobia. Sure, he was uncomfortable and squished, but at least he wasn’t hyperventilating on top of that.

Then again, Philip wasn’t too sure he could call himself lucky. Philip’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, but wide open with the fear that near-death electrifies people with. He was sweating like he’d just run the mile, the liquid burning into his eyes and running down his throat. His pants had been torn open by a piece of metal that nearly jutted into his leg, instead only slicing off millimeters of skin. He was pretty sure he was bleeding, but he was so disoriented, he couldn’t tell how much, or even from where. And along with everything else, he had a massive headache in his forehead from dealing with Clarence shouting in his mind. The adrenaline shooting through his veins had him gasping for air, his heart pounding restlessly against his prison of bones. Philip really,  _ really  _ didn’t want to die, but he’d be lying if he said unconsciousness didn’t seem like the better option right now.

Allowing Clarence to lead him to the safest room nearby, he dropped out of its ventilation shaft and peered out into the pitch-black corridor. He listened for Clarence’s affirmation, and then slunk off into the darkness, hoping these creatures couldn’t hear the sound of his organs fighting to tear himself apart from the inside.

* * *

Nicole heard the storming of footsteps up to her room and wondered what could have gotten their mother into such an ill-tempered mood. Her door slammed open and she saw her sister being dragged in by the wrist, the Walky-Talky exposed in her hand. Victoria met her eyes with a guilty frown. Nicole rolled her eyes and leaned back against her bedpost.

“I can’t  _ believe  _ you girls would steal your father’s belongings!” their mother shrieked, her voice one pitch away from nails on a chalkboard. “You shouldn’t even be  _ allowed  _ in his private study! We’re going to have a  _ long chat _ about this when he returns from his business trip. Nicole, hand over the Walky-Talky!”

Nicole drew out an exaggerated groan for a total of five seconds as she leaned forward to take the device from where it was hidden under her stuffed lion. She tossed it over to her mother, who shot her a nasty glare before snatching the second Walky-Talky from her other daughter and stomping down the hall.

Victoria gently closed the door before scurrying over to her sister’s bed.

“You screwed up, big time,” Nicole hissed. Victoria flinched, but crawled onto the bed anyways, patting her hands down on the soft blanket.

“Yeah, well,  _ you  _ forgot that Poochy has a nose. Maybe next time you can actually lead the target directly up the stairs, instead of teasing him around the bottom floor with snacks you don’t actually have.”

Nicole huffed, slamming her head back on a purple pillow. “I didn’t actually want the dog, you dumb blonde. I--”

“I’m not blonde.”

“-- just wanted to perform a test.”

Victoria squinted. “On the dog, or on me?”

“Ooooh, clever girl.”

Victoria slapped her sister on the head with a pillow. Nicole laughed before grabbing her stuffed lion and slamming it into her head. Victoria’s eyes narrowed. “And so it begins.”

The resulting pillow war between the two sisters was the stuff of legend -- one that, unfortunately, would never go down in history.

* * *

Philip knew he was caught. The game was over, and so was his life; if he couldn’t already tell that from his aching limbs and those mangled creatures tearing open his clothes and flesh like they were one and the same, he knew it from the utter despair in Clarence’s screams.

“Clarence, it’s okay,” he promised. It was about time to finally accept that he was meant to die down here. Honestly, they’d never really had a chance at all. He doubted this ending was much worse than starvation or freezing to death. Now that he knew he didn’t have a choice but to give up… well, it was easier to accept his fate.

Clarence, on the other hand, wasn’t so quick to resign.

“No!  _ Damn it _ , monkey! Get back up! Get the hell up! No, no,  _ no  _ \-- “

Philip felt lighter by the second, as if he were being stripped out of his body. The pain slowly numbed until he could hardly feel his fingertips scraping against the metal floor. Maybe that was why he felt so calm. Clarence’s voice became more and more distant, but Philip could still hear his screams, still feel the pinpricks of  _ something  _ he was trying to instill Philip with -- but though he tried, he couldn’t even make Philip hallucinate anymore.

Their connection was being severed at last. It was what Philip always wanted. … And yet, he found himself trying to comfort the frightened parasite.

“Clarence, it’s okay,” he repeated. But Clarence didn’t want to listen.

“No -- no, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to -- please --”

Clarence’s cries soon faded into nothingness, and so did Philip.

* * *

Philip woke up in a small ship cabin, with a very disorienting sense of deja vu enveloping him. His mind was still foggy, but not clouded enough to obscure his final memories.

“Clarence?” he whispered, waiting patiently for a response.

But the seconds blurred into minutes, and none came.

Philip stood there and examined his surroundings with the vague sense that none of this was real. Or, no -- even worse,  _ all of it _ was real, and his grip on reality was slipping out of his hold. Something was there, looming over his mind; something had a hold of him, and it certainly wasn’t Clarence. There would never be another Clarence again.

Philip smiled, wishing he could cry, but he didn’t even feel capable of  _ that  _ anymore. He felt like a gaping chasm in his chest had opened, swallowing up all the hope and good he’d ever had. Now, he supposed, he would learn the agony Red had felt for the majority of his life.

Now, no one would ever know what happened down here. No one would ever know what happened to Philip. No one would ever know what happened to his father, or Red, or Amabel, or any of the other dozens of scientists who suffered and died down in the mines. No one would ever know the existence of the Tuurngait.

It would simply be a legend lost in time.


End file.
